U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan blocked the Trump administration’s citizenship database on Monday, ruling that the overhauled system violated federal privacy law and has already led states to wrongly purge eligible voters from their rolls.
The judge said the administration “knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote” when it consolidated Social Security numbers and citizenship data into a centralized database without congressional approval, according to her 75-page ruling.
The blocked system, called SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements), was originally designed to verify immigration status for federal benefits. The Trump administration overhauled it in 2025 to include natural-born citizens and permit bulk searches by states seeking to identify noncitizens on voter rolls.
States including Texas and Louisiana have already run voter registration lists through the modified database. Sooknanan found that some plaintiffs’ members were wrongfully identified as noncitizens and had their registrations canceled as a result.
The League of Women Voters, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and five individuals sued the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, and Department of Justice in September 2025, arguing the consolidation violated the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Justice Department lawyers argued only a small number of naturalized voters might have inaccurate citizenship data in Social Security records, but Sooknanan called that claim a “red herring.”
She found the administration “flunked compliance” with all three laws by “haphazardly” combining citizenship data the agencies “knew to be unreliable.” The judge also ruled that falsely labeling someone a noncitizen amounts to defamation, particularly because it implies a federal crime.
The ruling immediately halts the overhauled SAVE system. It is likely to be appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
This decision is part of a broader pattern of judicial resistance to the Trump administration’s election-related executive orders. Federal judges have blocked or limited multiple provisions of the administration’s attempts to impose new voter ID rules, restrict mail-in voting, and create a federal voter list—all without congressional approval, according to court filings and voting rights organizations.
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which represented some plaintiffs, said the ruling protects “the sacred right to vote” and marks “an important victory for the American people and our democracy.”
Sources
- Politico — Judge Sooknanan’s 75-page ruling blocking the SAVE database and findings of privacy violations
- CBS News — Details of the ruling, the three federal laws violated, and the administration’s compliance failures
- Reuters — Confirmation of the blocking of the revamped immigration database for voter checks
- Democracy Docket — Background on the DHS database and its use for voter purges
